Today I stumbled upon a story of an amazing story in social networking world. CNet news author Matt Asay share this story with us.
Some believe that Twitter has the power to change big events like Iranian elections. I think that its strength may be in much smaller, but still significant, ways.
In fact, I was the matchmaker recently between a Barcelona cabbie and an American employee of a pharmaceutical company. Well, a matchmaker between the cabbie and this lady’s BlackBerry, anyway.
It happened like this:
I have a Twitter search in TweetDeck that alerts me every time the word “Asay” is used on Twitter. (I need to be able to track down libel somehow!)
On August 30, I saw this tweet:
Hi! I’m a taxi driver from Barcelona. Somebody knows Jennifer Asay? She works for (pharmaceutical company). I’ve her Balckberry [sic].
Is this taxi a twitterer?
I happen to be married to a Jennifer Asay, but not this one. So I looked up her name on the Web and quickly found her on LinkedIn. I reached out to her there to give her the e-mail address of the taxi driver, which he provided in his tweet. I also replied to him to give him her e-mail address. No big deal, right?
On Wednesday, I heard back from Raúl, the taxi driver:
Hi! I am the taxidriver from Barcelona.
She has found me thanks to you.
I will be with her for I will give back its telephone.
Thank you very much by your work.Raúl
Nice, right? It gets better. Today, I heard from Jennifer, and it sounds like everything worked out, thanks to the power of Twitter (and LinkedIn):
I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you reached out to me….by a miracle, Raúl brought me my BlackBerry today!
What are the odds? In our increasingly networked world, the odds are getting shorter all the time.
Again, it’s a simple story, but one rich in possibilities too. Think about it. A twittering taxi driver reaches out to the massive echo chamber that is the Web and is heard by a complete stranger in Utah who also uses Twitter (me), who then turns to LinkedIn to find the sought-for person and connects them over e-mail.
There are lots of problems in the world. Communication–at least the possibility of communication–isn’t one of them.
P.S. There’s a very good chance that I’ve now ruined Jennifer’s life by getting her back in touch with her BlackBerry addiction, but I want this story to have a happy ending.
Sauce: CNet news
It’s strange that I can’t open your pages with firefox,safari? and IE always shut down automatically when I want submit a comment. Fortunately, I find that Chrome works!
I am so regret that I didn’t understand what twitter can do before it was blocked to us. Now I know it really has the power to change big events, and this is the reason why it was blocked.
Fortunately, we still have a Chinese twitter named Zuosa, it still survives. And I know people are changing some things through it!
.-= iwalk´s last blog ..Waiting For The Dark At Manly Beach =-.
well thx for the info,
i test my side here and got no problem using firefox, safari, chrome.
the problem is with IE, and i’m still working on it.
btw i didn’t know twitter was blocked there.
smtg to do with ‘green dam’ ?